My First Of Several Videos On The Garrett Axiom

[Reno Chris]

I just put up the first of several videos on using the Axiom. I'll do some others on using it in the field, but this one is an introduction to the Axiom filmed mostly in the office.

 

[RoobyRoobyRoo]

26 minutes ago, Reno Chris said:

I just put up the first of several videos on using the Axiom. I'll do some others on using it in the field, but this one is an introduction to the Axiom filmed mostly in the office.

He doesn’t post much folks, but when he does, it’s worth the weight 😉

Thanks Chris….

[General Mayhem]

42 minutes ago, Reno Chris said:

I just put up the first of several videos on using the Axiom. I'll do some others on using it in the field, but this one is an introduction to the Axiom filmed mostly in the office.

I have been watching your videos on the 'Tube for awhile, received a notification this morning regarding your new video. I am looking forward to it, also I can't wait to get my Axiom.

[phrunt]

Thanks for your introduction video, a good video covering the basics of it all.

There has been a lot of talk about the Axiom handling hot rocks better, and this is great of course and you particularly point out in the video the Axiom is even better than the current king I guess the SDC at handling hot rocks.  I've not owned an SDC so I'm not too clued on with it's performance on hot rocks.

With VLF's if you sit a small bit of gold next to a hot rock the VLF more often than not responds to the stronger signal (the hot rock) and ignores the little bit of gold, this is particularly noticeable with detectors like the Gold Bug 2 which I've found to be terrible in hot rock areas and will cause so much missed gold, the small coil being its savior as less chance of having both hot rock and gold under or near the coil at once and more modern detectors like the Equinox often capable of showing a response to the gold and the hot rock but lacking the depth of the more powerful PI type detectors.  The GB2 can miss a small bit of gold near a hot rock even at a reasonable distance due to it's elongated blanking in disc mode or just the "boiiiing" sound taking so long for the detector to recover from.

This is what I'm talking about with the Equinox / GB2

I haven't messed around so much testing this out with PI although I've not noticed it happening like it does with the VLF's, mainly because I don't notice the hot rocks as much as I do with the VLF's I guess.  I have some areas where I find my GPZ pretty much unusable as I spend all day digging small faint signals that end up being hot rocks buried so I prefer to use my GPX 4500 or 5000 at these spots as it doesn't respond at all on most of the hot rocks.  The GPX 6000 seems worse than the 7000 for the hot rocks I think, at least for the hot rock type I experience sounding off on more of them with a nice target signal.

So, this maybe more of a broad question, but although detectors like the Axiom do a great job ignoring hot rocks do they also as part of the process blank out a gold signal when the gold is right next to or even under the hot rock, or are they truly balancing out the hot rock as if it were just the soil?  I guess the best thing for me to do is experiment with putting gold around and under hot rocks with various detectors and see.

I'm not sure what our common hot rocks are, the iron stones are pretty obvious highly magnetic with booming signals but the most troublesome one is a green type of schist, not near as magnetic as the iron stones, gives more of a faint target signal unless its a very large piece but really plays havoc with detectors with even small pieces sounding like a good target.

On this particular day the GPZ was annoying me so much with hot rocks in this location I switched over to using the Equinox, I only had the 11" coil with me as I only had the Equinox with me as I was going for a coin hunt later on and although the Nox responds all over the place to the ground it at least found me a 1.2 gram nugget that afternoon.

Sorry for the unusual camera angle, I'm on a very steep hillside.

It would be awesome if the Axiom not only balanced out hot rocks but was also capable of seeing gold next to or under them with how densely packed the hot rocks can be in this particular location.  There will be a lot of missed gold there due to the hot rocks, it's a very productive gold area.

[Steve Herschbach]

19 hours ago, phrunt said:

So, this maybe more of a broad question, but although detectors like the Axiom do a great job ignoring hot rocks do they also as part of the process blank out a gold signal when the gold is right next to or even under the hot rock, or are they truly balancing out the hot rock as if it were just the soil? 

The VLF is having a problem because it is not balancing out the hot rock, while the PI is. It’s just another form of target masking. A hot rock is just a rock with a ground setting different than background. So yes, the PI is simply balancing out the hot rocks and making them invisible.

This is almost always a good thing. But for every hot rock and ground signal that exists, there is a tiny fraction of gold that might get rejected also. Nuggets that read exactly like the hot rock. Dual channel PI like most Minelab and Garrett detectors mostly eliminate this problem. It’s a huge issue with single channel PI detectors like the TDI and QED, and is what the famous ground balancing “hole” is all about.

In general though this issue is the very reason why ground balancing PI detectors were developed. To balance out hot rocks and ground that a VLF can’t handle. And even PI detectors vary in their ability at this task. If you followed the development of the Minelab SD/GP/GPX series, each generation added a new timing, the only goal of which was to tune out some ground or hot rock, that the previous version could not handle. Oddly, we went backwards a bit with the 6000 and 7000 in that regard, as they can be plagued by hot rocks a GPX 5000 can easily handle. Like the 5000, the Axiom also excels in this regard, but does not require as many separate modes to do so.

More about the PI “hole”

[phrunt]

Thanks for explaining it Steve! That's great news.

[Gerry in Idaho]

Nice to see you on here again Chris.  Your knowledge of gold is top. Explanation of the Axiom and it's capabilities are exactly what I have been seeing.  I've spent quite a few hours on an SDC-2300 and so for me, the Axiom's better depth on overall varying sizes of gold and the fact that it feels 3x lighter than as SDC, will keep me swinging the Axiom.

As Steve H also mentioned, yes the 6000/7000 seem to go backwards as for the hot rocks and ground cancelling and the Axiom stayed true to helping us be able to hunt those areas.  

Well done.